Estimating Trade Elasticities

Estimating Trade Elasticities

Role: Author

One cannot exaggerate the importance of estimating how international trade responds to changes in income and prices. But there is a tension between whether one should use models that fit the data but that contradict certain aspects of the underlying theory, or models that fit the theory but contradict certain aspects of the data. The essays in Estimating Trade Elasticities offer one practical approach to deal with this tension. With the new estimates of trade elasticities, the book examines how they assist in restoring the consistency between elasticity estimates and the world trade identity.